How do you know if a VOR is High, Low, or Terminal?

Question

Is there any way of telling on both a VFR and IFR chart what type of VOR we are looking at?

Answer 1

The range of the VOR is included in the Airport/Facility Directory data under the name class

From A/FD legend:

Example:

Service volume for each class:

Answer 2

Typically terminal VOR's do not have compass roses around them if they are strictly terminal VOR's. I can't find an example of one so I don't have an image for it.

Edit I found an example: Source: SkyVector

The DEN VOR has no compass rose, so its either a terminal VOR or they omitted the compass rose for clarity. There are two other VOR's in close proximity, MILE HIGH on the North East side of the field and Falcon to the east of Buckley AFB. According to AirNav NavAid Info its a high VOR.

As far as high/low VOR, one way to tell is to look at the High/Low enroute IFR charts.

For example, here is a portion of a low-enroute IFR chart:

Source: SkyVector

You can see two VOR stations on here labeled Minot Intl and Devils Lake Rgnl with a victor airway between them (V430).

Here is the same area from the high enroute IFR chart:

Source: SkyVector

You can see that the VOR symbol around Devils Lake Rgnl has disappeared and (although its difficult to see) the VOR symbol has also disappeared. NavAid Website lists DVL (Devils Lake) as a LOW VOR and also lists MOT (Minot International) as a HIGH VOR.

There is no differentiation between the VOR high/low symbols on a VFR chart because low altitude VOR's can serve aircraft up to 18,000 feet where you would need to file an IFR flight plan anyway, so all VOR's regardless of high/low are available to VFR flights.

Putting it another (technical) way is that high/low VOR's have the same service volume for VFR and low-enroute IFR flights, so they do not need to be distinguished on VFR or low-enroute IFR charts.

Answer 3

From the chart you can understand what type of VOR is that But there are also other ways . By checking the frequency band you can also understand the type of that VOR. There are basically two types of them and they are Terminal VOR(TVOR) and Airway VOR. The whole VOR frequency range is VHF-108 to 117.95MHz. ILS frequency shares some portion of the TVOR. The terminal VOR are mainly of low and the airway VOR are mainly of high type.

• TVOR frequency band are from 108.00 to 112.00MHz. In details, TVOR uses even first decimal and even first decimal +50KHz upto 112MHz. Like 108.00MHz, 108.15MHZ, 108.20MHz, 108.25MHz etc
• and the ILS uses odd first decimal and odd first decimal +50KHz upto 112.00MHz. Like 108.10MHz, 108.15MHz,108.30MHz, 108.35MHz etc.

• Airway VOR uses the remainder of the frequency band 112.00MHz to 117.95MHz.

• other than this you can understand the VOR type from the chart the people has already shown.